AND SVN Build Thread

Was this really necessary? Honestly, I'm trying to help you correct what appear to be outright flaws and problems in the mod that I think got a lot right but needs some polish to smooth over some obvious issues, this type of attitude doesn't really make people want to help you out.

@Joseph;

I think I can see where he's coming from; he took time to type out what he thought could improve the mod and it was simply brushed off as "WAD" or "self inflicted". Personally I got a bit put off with your blunt "WAD" and the lack of discussion thereof. It gives a sort of elitist, "I am so sure i'm right i'm not even gonna talk about it" impression. Just sayin :)
 
@ark,
I guess that's a shortcoming of mine. But as I read down the "list" I kept getting the impression "this is what you must do" not "this would help because.."

And sometimes when it's, to me, a clear design feature what else should I have said besides WAD?

And using 2 Options or 3 that are Clearly diametrically opposites in their purpose and then complain about it, says maybe you weren't paying attention? Would be like using Limited Religion and Multiple Religion Spread, Huh?!

I guess next time, if there is one, I'll let 45* answer 1st. Since my Diplomacy skills are too blunt and I lack tact. :dunno: Comes with getting :old: and having had to put up with the public most of my life. So warning to all, if you come across as arrogant or "know it all" I'll react badly. Just Sayin'. So you are in the Know.

Would seem urtho and I got off to a Bad start then, doesn't it?

JosEPh :)
 
@ark,
I guess that's a shortcoming of mine. But as I read down the "list" I kept getting the impression "this is what you must do" not "this would help because.."
I can see where you were coming from with regard to urtho's discussion style. However at one point both urtho and myself wrote a paragraph each describing our thoughts on the early animals being too strong and got the "to you and ark: wad" answer. A more conduce approach would have been to state why you think they are not to strong or state how you usually deal with the issue. Personally in this particular case I don't care so much about the early strong animals issue as it just occurred to me that javelineers, with a strength of 3, which were absent in BTS can deal with the animals readily enough.

To conclude, I know better than to be too put off by something as trivial, as its easy to misinterpret the way someone is passing something across, particularly when using this form of communication. :)
 
Look at the screenshot again, there is tundra in the city radius and the city is well north of the equator (mini map). I've seen this over multiple games, the building are never buildable, even for a city that is near one of the poles surrounded by ice. Not sure how it's gotten messed up, something to do with the lattitude settings perhaps.

Mmmm... it looks like you're right. ** I've done a test myself. But setting latitude limit to 0 isn't a solution for me. Igloos and other affected buildings are supposed to be built over 50° of latitude, so I'll have to look what happened because I remember I could build them; something has been broken somewhere.

No attacks with raging barbs on while using another aspect of the mod is a flaw, if you don't think so then I'm not sure what to say really. I guess clearly spell out in your promos for the mod that if you use this aspect of the mod, don't expect to use a feature that's in the base game as this mod you're going to download and try out breaks that feature.

urtho, there ARE some features of this mod which are conflicting with each other. And I'm frankly not sure than I am able to "fix" them all. I'm sorry that it's not correctly spelled out as a warning that if you use feature x, you'll probably have problems with feature y, but there are a lot of possible combinations and not all of them have yet been tried probably (or at least have been reported on the forum). So I even wasn't aware that a conflict might arise. But keep in mind that there are people who think that Barb civs should be given more chance to evolve and if you make them settle later, you'll probably are cutting their chances to evolve.

As I've said the +5 was a temp quick fix for my game to solve something that I think was off base, the underlying problem is too much unhealthy generating "things" in the mod, from buildings to civics and so on. I actually agree that +5 is too much but it was the quickest way to solve it in a current game I had going. Having said that, +1 is indeed way too low, it should be at least +2 or +3 imo.

Ok, but you've not answered my question; how would "fresh water health" help cities that don't have fresh water? Moreover, as I said I've never had problems managing unhealthiness and so have other people here. Could it then be your playstyle? I mean, if you cut down forests, build factories and mines everywhere, it's obvious you'll get unhealthiness. That's why I don't always go on crazily chopping down forests, for example. I think the game is well balanced in this sense: if you get too much unhealthiness and other people don't, it could be your way of playing, not a problem of the mod!

Great, turning off more features as they don't work. Sigh, selling your mod just wonderfully here.

I've already answered you here: they work, but they don't work as you think they do. You don't like these features? Turn them off... there are people who actually like these features, other people who dislike them simply don't use them. That's why they were made as options

What do I need to change to remove the 1st ring and city tile cultural invulnrability that all cities currently have? This aspect of the mod is such an awful idea that I really have no more words for it. It cuts out a core part of what Civ4 is - if you can't defend your cities culturally so that you're losing control of nearby tiles and even the cities themselves TOO F-ING BAD, that's how it's supposed to work. Guess you need to push that dangerously close border away from a threatened city by other means, hmmm?

As I said, there are people actually liking this option. I suppose it can be improved as you suggest but I don't know how long it will take because I'm not sure what part of the code needs to be changed. FYI anyway I get asked very often in my games if I want city X join Y empire because they feel more attracted to that empire than to mine. Then I get a chance to choose. I can choose to let that city go or I can choose to hold it (and eventually pay the consequences if I don't take care of the problem).

Hmm, ok then. You're welcome, glad I could help. I'll have some more comments a bit later I think. Despite my tone at times I am trying to help you out here. This mod improves on and adds to many aspects in Civ4 that I enjoy but there are still some rather rough spots I would say.

Believe me urtho, help and suggestions ARE appreciated. Just bear in mind that we can't do everything. First of all because I guess we lack the knowledge, althoug I've learned a lot in the last months about coding; secondly because we do this in our free time and since I've got a job, I fix things on AND everytime I can but I'm not on duty 24/7; so changes and fixes need time.
What I'm really proud of and happy about, it that this forum is alive again! It was abandoned for months and now people are playing again what I truly think is the best Civ4 mod. :)

**Edit: I've done another test, it was my mistake before: it looks like I've no problem in building igloos or Snow Castle. Can you please upload your savegame related to that screenshot? It could be something related to some other game option. Thank you.
 
A more conduce approach would have been to state why you think they are not to strong or state how you usually deal with the issue.

I don't think he owes anyone the time to give an explanation. He is the one that is working on the mod when no one else would or could. There is no problem giving suggestions but I wouldn't expect for a second that anyone working on the mod should need to justify themselves to any of us. It is quite rude to even ask that of them.
 
12. Certain terrain features/improvements are unavailable in Worldbuilder for some bizarre reason by default in this mod. I can't think of a good reason for this, recommend you change these settings so it's "official" going forward.

CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml

<Type>IMPROVEMENT_CITY_RUINS</Type>
<bGraphicalOnly>0</bGraphicalOnly>

<Type>IMPROVEMENT_CITY_RUINS_ARCOLOGY</Type>
<bGraphicalOnly>0</bGraphicalOnly>

<Type>IMPROVEMENT_GOODY_HUT</Type>
<bGraphicalOnly>0</bGraphicalOnly>

I thought they were hidden by Afforess for some reason; but I've been able to find his original post back almost 3 years ago where he was suggesting re-enabling them; so this fix will be uploaded in the next revision. :)
 
I can see where you were coming from with regard to urtho's discussion style. However at one point both urtho and myself wrote a paragraph each describing our thoughts on the early animals being too strong and got the "to you and ark: wad" answer. A more conduce approach would have been to state why you think they are not to strong or state how you usually deal with the issue. Personally in this particular case I don't care so much about the early strong animals issue as it just occurred to me that javelineers, with a strength of 3, which were absent in BTS can deal with the animals readily enough.

To conclude, I know better than to be too put off by something as trivial, as its easy to misinterpret the way someone is passing something across, particularly when using this form of communication. :)

The Scout did used to be a Str 2 unit but I don't know when it got reduced in AND to a 1 str defender. And as I've not wanted to get ahead of 45*'s work on balance I've not put it back to str 2. And we've just not discussed it either to be truthful.

It's not that I disagree with what gets suggested it's just that I'm the sidekick here. If I wasn't stepping on 45*'s toes I'd be doing more changes than just the Forge line from your suggestions (which turned out rather well even though it did cause 45* some balance headaches) and my JC work (which also caused new balance issues).

I'm still not sure if the Barb World random CTD is fixed. 45* thinks he's found the problem but we 2 just can't get enough test time along with all these other issues to see if it is in fact working now.

So as 45* said, suggestions and pointing out bugs Are Very helpful, but you all need to have some patience on our getting them adressed and/or fixed. Just us 2 for now and while 45* is Marshal Dillon, I'm just Chester the gimpy deputy. ;)

JosEPh :)
 
I don't think he owes anyone the time to give an explanation. He is the one that is working on the mod when no one else would or could. There is no problem giving suggestions but I wouldn't expect for a second that anyone working on the mod should need to justify themselves to any of us. It is quite rude to even ask that of them.
This mod is a result of the contribution of a lot of people, not just the ones on the front line. As long as people take the time to write out suggestions or improvements, some of which are eventually adopted into the mod, we all contribute towards a better mod one way or another. And it is for that reason it is important that we are able to discuss new ideas / problems / changes / solutions to the mod properly. However as you state Joseph and particularly 45 are on the front line, and as far as timelines to resolving issues are concerned, they owe us nothing. I am personally happy to see this mod resurrected again, and am particularly greatful that 45 is taking the time to painstakingly resolve certain issues, despite having a full time job.

The Scout did used to be a Str 2 unit but I don't know when it got reduced in AND to a 1 str defender. And as I've not wanted to get ahead of 45*'s work on balance I've not put it back to str 2. And we've just not discussed it either to be truthful.
My current feel for it is that it should definitely stay as str 1, as we have access to an early javelineer, something I did not think of when I initially agreed with urtho when comparing this mod to vanilla BTS. So again, I fully retract what I said about early animals being OP; its a non issue now that I think about it in context of the javelineer.

It's not that I disagree with what gets suggested it's just that I'm the sidekick here. If I wasn't stepping on 45*'s toes I'd be doing more changes than just the Forge line from your suggestions (which turned out rather well even though it did cause 45* some balance headaches) and my JC work (which also caused new balance issues).
I am glad the forge line suggestion worked out. If I had no other commitments, I too would volunteer to dive into the code and try to help fix things. Just that right now its been a while since I have had a job and my wife would kill me if she found out that I am overcommiting myself to something that wont get us income :p

So as 45* said, suggestions and pointing out bugs Are Very helpful, but you all need to have some patience on our getting them adressed and/or fixed. Just us 2 for now and while 45* is Marshal Dillon, I'm just Chester the gimpy deputy. ;)
We know that and have faith in you guys :) We are greatful that you and particularly 45 are taking the time to address in particular the difficult bugs.
 
I've cut out any drama or other unhelpful stuff from my reply here, I thought about really getting into it and had started a post to that end but it's not really helpful and would just distract for no good end really.

If I was wrong or came across as too forceful or demanding I apologize, I obviously don't think I was doing so but let's just not get back into that now as it wouldn't be useful to any disussion. I'm just making some observations and possible suggestions here, use them or not as you will.

So... moving on...

45°38'N-13°47'E;12227145 said:
Ok, but you've not answered my question; how would "fresh water health" help cities that don't have fresh water?

It would help in the specific game I had going where I had 5 cities in my entire 40+ city empire not founded on fresh water. What can I say, the random map generator smiled on me that game as I had abundant rivers and small lakes dotted all over the place. It was a quick fix to solve a temp issue, nothing more as I never overchop as I like lumbermills but really this is getting off point. I still think the underlying issue is that the mod has too many sickness causing "things", you clearly don't agree. So be it.

I've already answered you here: they work, but they don't work as you think they do. You don't like these features? Turn them off... there are people who actually like these features, other people who dislike them simply don't use them. That's why they were made as options

So, what option will turn off invulnrable 1st ring and city tile culture? No sarcasm, no rancor. Please educate me - how do I get back city flipping and 1st ring city tile cultural fights like you see all the time in the base game as I've never ever seen them in all the time using this mod despite whatever settings I choose or whatever you want to say to the contrary.

As I said, there are people actually liking this option. I suppose it can be improved as you suggest but I don't know how long it will take because I'm not sure what part of the code needs to be changed. FYI anyway I get asked very often in my games if I want city X join Y empire because they feel more attracted to that empire than to mine. Then I get a chance to choose. I can choose to let that city go or I can choose to hold it (and eventually pay the consequences if I don't take care of the problem).

Oh I see now, you don't know how to turn this off. Disapointing, not to mention giving me a strong urge just to delete this mod altogether right now given how awful I think this "feature" is... sigh. Needless to say, I do hope you can look into how this can be changed back to the default game behavior at some point as this little item ruins a huge part of the game.

Btw on your last point, I'll say it again - never EVER seen it a single time. No culture wars at all over 1st ring and city tile culture as far as I can tell with this mod active. No revolts, no requests to join my empire, no unrest, just nothing at all. What settings you are using vs what I'm using that prevents this, I'd really like to know.

I've done another test, it was my mistake before: it looks like I've no problem in building igloos or Snow Castle. Can you please upload your savegame related to that screenshot? It could be something related to some other game option. Thank you.

I don't have that game anymore the screenshot came from I'm afraid. I've restarted and abandoned numerous games since I've started using this mod for the reasons I've mentioned before so I periodically clean out my saves folder of older games. If I see it happen again I'll be sure to make sure I document it and get a save game uploaded for you.

So, with that out of the way... my suggestions / observations / comments part 2.

16. Religions seem rather unbalanced with a few being obviously better choices to try and found vs others. Hellenism and Taoism with their free/special unit promotions especially seem objectively better than some of the plain jane others with no special benefits of their own. Yeah it's a kind of strategic choice but I seriously doubt the AI considers these kinds of things in their research paths. Some of the religion-restricted wonders and abilities are strong as I said above, others are very weak/non-existant so from a strategic balancing on which one(s) you're trying to found it doesn't make the choices too hard to make I've found.

17. Civics are a mess, full stop. Overly complicated at times, out of left field for some of the bonuses and penalties at others, and occasionally completely useless and never ever a good choice that a player would actually want to use at still other times. I can see it already has a thread and disussion going on issues with them however so I'll leave it to that place. They do need work I think it goes without saying, I may perhaps add in some specific comments in that thread.

18. Some of the new random events are a real kick in the face and downright unfair in their frequency. The mercenaries one in particular is insane. I got it 6 times in a row in a game I had awhile back, not kidding or exagerating in the least. Some of these events were only 3 or 4 turns apart which is just "oh F-off RNG" time for me - open up WB and delete that crap that spawns in the middle of my empire on the one unclaimed tile possible, no guilt at all. Some tweaks or cool downs is needed here as it's a pretty brutal event even once, having it happen multiple times nearly in a row is just... not good.

19. More on events, this time some weirdness (bugs?). See below screenshot:

Civ4ScreenShot0149.jpg

What is the "Harry Potter" event mentioned in the log? I noticed it scroll by on EoT, but I received no pop up or other notification of this event so I don't know if this was a good thing/bad thing or if I had a choice or anything really. I've seen this as well with a "dock workers in the ___ Empire have gone on strike" event that supposedly struck my empire, yet again no pop up or mention of this event beyond the line in the event log. Note that there is a "dock worker strike" event that gives a pop-up with 3 choices as I've seen that, but there appears to be a strike event where there is no pop-up or player notification/options as well. I searched in CIV4EventInfos.xml and can see that the events are there and from what I can see they give some turns of happiness, but in-game I've seen no info on them when they happen as mentioned. Some player feedback/info would be helpful for these events.

20. Events yet again, this time there appear to be an error on loading a sound file, possibly related to a specific event (wootz steel):

Civ4ScreenShot0105.JPG

<Type>EVENT_CRUCIBLE_STEEL_1</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_EVENT_CRUCIBLE_STEEL_1</Description>

This *may* have been from a game on beta2, as the screenshot is far back enough that I may have still been on that rather than the SVN. If this no longer applies to current SVN releases feel free to ignore, otherwise just letting you know there may be an error with this event.

21. Events again one more time - yes I know, what can I say there were a lot of little issues and problems that I noticed over the course of many games. Anyways, the below screenshot is an event that gives proper notification as it should, yet the "bad" choice gives no pop up info or bad consequence of choosing it. You can just select it and nothing happens as far as I can see. I always take the gold hit as it's minor and I'm not sure picking the other would cause a glitch of some kind.

Civ4ScreenShot0127.jpg

22. Can anything be done with the AI and it's building patterns/choices for cities? They are really, really suboptimal the vast majority of the time, cities 1 tile off of rivers, 1 tile off of ocean access, built right on top of resources which is a bad choice 95% of the time (you can't tell me they can't see hidden resources as well, cities built right on top of oil in the ancient era and so on, sigh) and other odd crap where cities are far too close when 1 tile over would be better or too far away where there is tons of useable tiles even with larger 3-ring cities. Not sure this can be edited or altered by modders or if this is hard-coded behavior but it makes taking over AI cities and empires a raze-and-replace situation nearly all the time aside from captials.

23. More AI programming "issues" - see screenshot below, note the workers building a farm right on the border:

Civ4ScreenShot0159.jpg

Ok, now realize that I'm at war with France on that border and then you can see why I'm raging at those workers. This is something I consider a bug in the vanilla BtS game that was never fixed - workers should NEVER EVER go near an active war zone/border, I don't care if they're on auto, or pathing, or need need need to build something sooo bad omg just let me build something on that unimproved tile already please... -> just stop it already. Don't go there ya dumb horsehockys, you will die to the single horse unit the AI always keeps handy for just such situations where the stupid workers in the game pull this crap.

This is not strictly a RoM or AND issue as I've mentioned as I used to see this in regular non-modded games but I'd love if it could somehow be fixed in this mod. If it's not possible to do this I understand, just hopeful that this is something that is within the editing power currently available.

24. Weirdness again when it comes to borders and culture during wars, perhaps due to realistic culture spread as well? In any case, why don't I control that river plains hill tile with a mine on it north of Tours? I didn't control it when Tours was a French city, now that it's my city and France has no other city they own near it (at least 4 plus tiles away), I STILL don't control the tile. WTF I say to that, how do they still have control of that tile?

Civ4ScreenShot0158.JPG

25. The difference in spread of tech discovery for the various road/travel building techs is a bit off for me. Cart paths are early and largely useless aside from resource hookups, that's fine. Roads come in at Monarchy, alright a bit later than I'd care for but mostly ok as well. But then paved roads come in nearly right away at Construction. This is too soon, I've barely built any roads but the most essential by the time they are obsolete. Heck in my last game I built 5 *tiles* of road in my entire 10 city empire before I realized how close I was to PR and just suffered without any road connections until PR came in.

Then once you're done with PR, the next one is railroads a long way off in the industrial era at the tech of the same name, but again fairly soon after they are available you have electric railroads come in at Electronics where you have to do over your entire empire again for at best minimal gains, 10/turn vs 12/turn is minor. Spread things out a bit more I'd say, especially PR - make them available with Engineering like they used to be is my suggestion. Similar spacing for the later travel build techs, spread out a bit more so each one gets some use before becoming obsolete.

26. I love how buildings now tell you how much they'll "actually" give you when it comes to hammers, food and so on when using this mod. However, I am confused sometimes why it will tell you a building will give you a benefit that is not obvious from it's given abilities such as Military buildings like the military airbase and garrison do for production. Others do it to, such as the Laboratory, see screenshot below:

Civ4ScreenShot0168.JPG

I originally thought it was factoring in potential specialists you may or may not assign but aside from how it shouldn't do that, that doesn't explain the military buildings that don't give specialist possibilities. Is it factoring civics and multipliers for unit production? It's a bit confusing and not obvious how it's determining you'll get an "actual" benefit from buildings sometimes.

27. Part of the balancing effort for this mod was in alterations to how tech diffuses as I understand it. This is a good idea in theory, but in practice what happens is that if you're playing a continents type map, one continent with the super player on it, that being the human that knows how to work the system with all the new changes and improvements, this continent will zoom out ahead of the others until ocean contact opens up. You get annoyances like all religions and guilds founded on your continent and nothing on the other two because your continent is teching like mad from your empire and the other AIs leeching off of you.

Just abandoned another game with this mod for this very reason as my continent had founded all but 1 religion in the world. Stupid little former barb Civs (with REV on) form single city countries with 5 and 6 pop and 10 turns later they're founding religions due to tech leeching off me and the other established AIs. Not good, and I'm not sure how it could be fixed really.

28. Some traits in this mod both modded and original seem to again be objectively "better" than the other trait options. Deciever for example is very very weak, where as Agricultural is just wow, I mean really OP from my games experience. I abandoned a game I had going with Atotoztli in the medivial era awhile back as I was just completely stomping on the AIs in that game, what a strong trait. Charismatic also seems very strong, it of course is very good in the base game vanilla BTS as well, but in this mod with fractional xp rewards on cutting xp unit promotion reqs by 25% is even more powerful. Some ajustments and/or balancing seems needed in this area at some point. Not saying the ones I mentioned need nerfing, but buffing up some of the other seemingly "lesser" traits may be worth looking at.

29. Are minor/barb civs able to complete wonders? Or perhaps the question should really be "should they be able to" as they clearly can do so based on this screenshot:

Civ4ScreenShot0137.JPG

I'm not sure how I feel about this really, although it did strike me as odd that a minor civ that is at war with everyone and would struggle just to survive without being swallowed up by an established empire within 100 turns of being "born" decided that building a wonder was the proper build strategy for it to choose. Perhaps just a very unlikely one-off chance occurance but it was a bit odd to me.

A final note here on balance when it comes to the AI - until you can teach it do things like this:

Civ4ScreenShot0147.JPG

it's a lost cause I fear. Or at the very least it's a severly uphill battle. There are so many ways to power up your empire with all the new options, human players are just going to leave the AI in the dust once they grasp the finer points of the mod and learn how to exploit them to best effect. I sincerly wish you the best of luck in your balancing efforts, but you may be at it a while longer as in my experience the AI just doesn't understand how useful and "must have right now" and "higher priority than anything else" certain techs and buildings for various cities and game situations there are with this mod active that just didn't exist in the base game.

So that's it for now I think. Keep in mind, nothing here is a demand or something that "must be done", these are observations and requests for discussion and possible change if the change is feasible and popular/requested enough. Comments on anything here are welcome.
 
So, what option will turn off invulnrable 1st ring and city tile culture? No sarcasm, no rancor. Please educate me - how do I get back city flipping and 1st ring city tile cultural fights like you see all the time in the base game as I've never ever seen them in all the time using this mod despite whatever settings I choose or whatever you want to say to the contrary.

This would require a reworking of several Options. Fixed Borders, Realistic Culture Spread, Larger City radius (3 tiles) and without the Options in front of me probably 1 or 2 more.

A long time ago Culture was sacrificed because various original Modders thought that City Flipping was a player exploit. I argued endlessly against it in bothRom/AND and later in C2C. Needless to say I lost the argument (twice in fact). You would have to go back to RoM version 2.0 or earlier to get City Flipping back. REV did not help either. So a big case of reverse engineering. We used to have units like the Entertainer and what C2C had for awhile the Story Teller that could be used to spread Culture in a small way like a Great Artist used to be able to do, the Culture Bomb (which is but a shell of it's former usefulnes in spreading culture). Sorry Culture is an atrophied limb and a useless Victory Condition. :(

So this mod may not be to your liking. Because the Main 9 City tiles will not change ownership by Culture but only with outright conquering.

19.
What is the "Harry Potter" event mentioned in the log?
A leftover from the Events Folder that was supposed to be changed and/or removed because of bias. (edit: that was C2C, it's probably still offensive to some ppl and broken here in AND)

16. On the List to improve, but the modder that helps with it is on another project right now.

17. A thread has been created to address Civics which are also on the List.

18. Way down the list because Random Events can be turned off AND the Modder who made them isn't around as much as he used to be. They take Python and/or SDK skills. If by chance you have those skills we could use them there.

20. ?

21. Sometimes you don't have the Money. :dunno:

22. The AI places cities on resources to gain Immediate access to it, like Iron or Copper. They just don't get the tile improvement. You can do the same, but we as players like the tile improvements benefits. The AI may not be looking that far down the road in planning as you and I would do. If you are a C++ programmer and/or SDK we could use help there too. We are trying to bring such improvements that the C2C programmers have accomplished as C2C was based off RoM/AND in the beginning and Afforess started to merge the C2C DLL into AND before he left. But he did not finish the Merge.

Oh I see now, you don't know how to turn this off. Disapointing, not to mention giving me a strong urge just to delete this mod altogether right now given how awful I think this "feature" is... sigh.

This is as far as I'm going tonight.

JosEPh
 
I took some time to run down some of the things mentioned earlier. Here's what I found:

Fishing Boats Sunk
The Fishing Boats Sunk event is actually mis-coded. It's supposed to make you choose between spending the money and losing the Fishing Boats that triggered it. However, the code doesn't tell the event to target a Fishing Boats tile! I played around with it a little and found this is what needs changing. In the Civ4EventTriggerInfos.xml file, lines 26582 and 26583 need to read as follows:

Code:
<iNumPlotsRequired>1</iNumPlotsRequired>
<bOwnPlot>1</bOwnPlot>

This will cause the event to target a Fishing Boats and then you would have to pay or lose the Boats.

Event Text
The Harry Potter, Dock Workers' Strike, and a few other events have a text problem that causes it to appear as though it's happening in YOUR civilization when it really isn't. The problem is that these events use [CT_EMPIRE] to try and call the Dynamic Civilization Name for that empire, and it calls your empire's name instead. The events from the basic game use a string starting with % to call the nationality adjective instead (you may notice that they always refer to the triggering civ as the Something Empire regardless of its dynamic name). I don't know how to use the Dynamic Civ Names properly at the moment, as I don't know exactly where CT_EMPIRE comes from. It's buried somewhere in the DLL code, and I can't read that as well as I can read XML. Changing the text files to use the % convention will solve that problem.

Music Issues
I found that PraetoriusVolte.mp3 is a main soundtrack file from Civ 4. It's not tied to a particular event - it's one of the background music files for the Medieval Era. I would suspect some kind of installation problem over anything else, if the mod can't find a regular soundtrack file. If you haven't seen it lately, it's probably nothing to worry about. The alternative is copying the soundtrack files to a new folder inside the mod.

Laboratory Production
I think these buildings are showing you how much of a benefit you will get if their condition is met, but that's all.

Road Techs
Maybe Trade is a better fit for Roads than waiting all the way until Monarchy? That would put Roads about in the middle of the Ancient Era, which would be about a full Era of distance between them and Construction. I think Paved Roads needs to stay somewhere in the Classical Era (as I think Roman roads are a very good example of what a Paved Road is), but I could see moving them up to Machinery tech; still Classical Era, but closer to the end of the era.

Barbarian Wonders
The Civ4CivilizationInfos.xml controls what each civilization can and can't build (it's how Unique Buildings and Units are triggered). For the Barbarians, anything that they are not supposed to be able to build is set to NONE, like this:
Code:
<Building>
	<BuildingClassType>BUILDINGCLASS_PYRAMID</BuildingClassType>
	<BuildingType>NONE</BuildingType>
</Building>
This keeps the Barbarians from building the Pyramids. Terracotta Army is not on this list; that's why the Barbarians were able to build them.

I hope this helps.
 
Oh I see now, you don't know how to turn this off. Disapointing, not to mention giving me a strong urge just to delete this mod altogether right now given how awful I think this "feature" is... sigh.
While I agree that sometimes Joseph may have seemed a bit brash on his response to certain points of yours, this kind of attitude is just plain unacceptable. The people working on this mod do so in their own spare time and as such don't owe you anything. If you are unhappy with it, just uninstall it and spare us the attitude.

In an attempt to try and conclude this post in a positive manner and to keep future conversations constructive, I will still say this:

If I make an attempt to weed out the negative tone of your text (which is quite hard), I can accept that there are certain points that you make which are legitimate and that could benefit the mod. So in the future, if you want to get more cooperative feedback, try to tone down the attitude.
 
23. Always use an escort for your workers near borders, always. Even vanilla Civ thru all of it's versions tells you this. It's a Sid Meier's Design, always use escorts for Settlers and Workers. Unless you like having them killed or captured.

24. Please read how Realistic Culture Spread works and Fixed Borders too.

25. That's the way the Original Mod Author Afforess designed the road system. Vokayra's suggestion is a good possibility.

26. There was an Option in BUG to turn off the "actuals". Maybe that would be better for you?

27. Stop using REV and it's associated Options, they seem to really bother you. I generally (almost never) do not use REV but for the occasional test game.

Vokayra has given some good responses to some of the other points.

@urtho,
Did you ever state what Difficulty level you play on? From your remarks I would guess Deity, but then some of the things you state, like workers near a border, are what a novice would post. Or the Hill that is still under enemy control while using Realistic Culture Spread (and probably With Fixed Borders On) comes across as someone who hasn't bothered to look up what an Option(s) does. It's a mixed bag. And a lot of your complaints are nothing more than personal play style and preferences. There are valid points occasionally too, but far less than play style preferences put to post as demands for change to suit your style of play.

JosEPh
 
Added Vokayra's Fishing Boat Event Fix in SVN version 614.

JosEPh
 
So, what option will turn off invulnrable 1st ring and city tile culture? No sarcasm, no rancor. Please educate me - how do I get back city flipping and 1st ring city tile cultural fights like you see all the time in the base game as I've never ever seen them in all the time using this mod despite whatever settings I choose or whatever you want to say to the contrary.
Maybe you have 'no city culture flipping' option on when u set up the game. Your not choosing play now option I hope, always select 'custom game'.
Having Revolutions on speeds up the process of flipping a city but even without REV on you can flip cities, i've done it lots of times. The thing about the surrounding tiles of a city being invulnerable to culture conversion is because they inherently belong to that city. However, you can flip the city through culture just the same way you do in civ4bts. Then you will have the city and those tiles ;)

Just abandoned another game with this mod for this very reason as my continent had founded all but 1 religion in the world. Stupid little former barb Civs (with REV on) form single city countries with 5 and 6 pop and 10 turns later they're founding religions due to tech leeching off me and the other established AIs. Not good, and I'm not sure how it could be fixed really.
Turn off Barb Civs option when u setup game. Alternatively there is a setting in the BUG menu to do with barb civs. You can edit how many techs they get when they spawn, how many units etc, also how big the city needs to be before they become a 'civ'.

-- Overall im not sure what difficulty you are playing on but I think monarch is a good starting point, i've played this mod quite a lot as well as c2c and the AI isn't as dumb as they appear. I usually play on immortal which is fun. My advice is to just boost the difficulty up a couple of notches.
About the :yuck: I too thought there was too much unhealthiness but after awhile you realise its really not hard to have +40 :food: in a city at which point -8 :yuck: isn't going to kill you.
 
Road Techs
Maybe Trade is a better fit for Roads than waiting all the way until Monarchy? That would put Roads about in the middle of the Ancient Era, which would be about a full Era of distance between them and Construction. I think Paved Roads needs to stay somewhere in the Classical Era (as I think Roman roads are a very good example of what a Paved Road is), but I could see moving them up to Machinery tech; still Classical Era, but closer to the end of the era.
I concur that trade should allow you to build roads, not monarchy. I also feel that paved roads should remain where they are (construction).

What do you guys think about giving roads / paved roads +1 movement upon the discovery of engineering? This was available in vanilla BTS but was never adopted for any mods.
 
Maybe you have 'no city culture flipping' option on when u set up the game. Your not choosing play now option I hope, always select 'custom game'.
Having Revolutions on speeds up the process of flipping a city but even without REV on you can flip cities, i've done it lots of times. The thing about the surrounding tiles of a city being invulnerable to culture conversion is because they inherently belong to that city. However, you can flip the city through culture just the same way you do in civ4bts. Then you will have the city and those tiles ;)


Turn off Barb Civs option when u setup game. Alternatively there is a setting in the BUG menu to do with barb civs. You can edit how many techs they get when they spawn, how many units etc, also how big the city needs to be before they become a 'civ'.

-- Overall im not sure what difficulty you are playing on but I think monarch is a good starting point, i've played this mod quite a lot as well as c2c and the AI isn't as dumb as they appear. I usually play on immortal which is fun. My advice is to just boost the difficulty up a couple of notches.
About the :yuck: I too thought there was too much unhealthiness but after awhile you realise its really not hard to have +40 :food: in a city at which point -8 :yuck: isn't going to kill you.

Isn't that "No City Flipping after Conquest"? The Option that allows a City to revert Back to it's former Empire if you don't work the conquered cities culture a bit. Used to be why I always built a Theater 1st after capturing a City. That and leaving that Option Off.

The Nine main city tiles part is definitely so.

But it's Much Much harder to get a City to flip than vanilla BtS. So the tactics you used in Vanilla have to be much more intensified to get a city to flip. And it's Not as easy as you say Sgt, you know that.

The point is urtho wants the tiles to be eaten away at the edges of the city Like vanilla BtS so he can See his culture tactics at work. Same thing was again pointed out about the Lone Hill with the Mine that was still Frances territory and not his after he captured a French city. And That is the Effect of Realistic Culture Spread With the addition of Fixed Borders also being On.

As for urthos' complaint about Founding and Acquiring all Religions by the Tech Leader, yes that is still a problem in this mod. Been addressed in C2C but Not here...Yet. It is on the List of To Dos and just not my list. It means a definite re-ordering of the Tech Tree And the Tech prereqs. Old AND Tech paths have to be re thought and broken up. Then comes the questions: Do you want religion techs as a Prereq for a later one, do you want Religion giving Techs to be Dead End techs (And most should be).

DH was going to help add in more religions to AND as well as help with the Re-ordering but that has gone by the way side for now. Although there could be someone else with this experience that Might help with some coaxing. But that won't be near term either.

JosEPh
 
Vokarya - thanks for all your answers, good comments and fixes. Not quoting you as I mostly agree with everything you've posted so any response would be a one line affirmation heh, thanks for the insight into the issues I mentioned.

A long time ago Culture was sacrificed because various original Modders thought that City Flipping was a player exploit. I argued endlessly against it in bothRom/AND and later in C2C. Needless to say I lost the argument (twice in fact). You would have to go back to RoM version 2.0 or earlier to get City Flipping back. REV did not help either. So a big case of reverse engineering. We used to have units like the Entertainer and what C2C had for awhile the Story Teller that could be used to spread Culture in a small way like a Great Artist used to be able to do, the Culture Bomb (which is but a shell of it's former usefulnes in spreading culture). Sorry Culture is an atrophied limb and a useless Victory Condition. :(

Well that is very disappointing to hear. Hmm, I do like a lot of this mods features but this aspect of it... if it is not possible to fix I suppose I'll just have to live with it. I'd hope this could be looked at someday however as I really dislike it as I think you've grasped by this point.

But on the bright side, don't look now Joseph but it appears we actually agree on something for once. :)

21. Sometimes you don't have the Money. :dunno:

Heh nope, over 2400 in the bank in the screenie. It was noted it was a bug however so no big deal.

23. Always use an escort for your workers near borders, always. Even vanilla Civ thru all of it's versions tells you this. It's a Sid Meier's Design, always use escorts for Settlers and Workers. Unless you like having them killed or captured.

I'm not misunderstanding base game design, I'm asking if it can be changed in the mod by altering their default behavior not clueless about how the design was supposed to work by the almighty Sid - I know this I just don't care for it and was wondering if it could be changed, nothing more. If it's not possible or no one has the ability or time to alter this or cares about or even thinks this is an issue worth attention, so be it.

24. Please read how Realistic Culture Spread works and Fixed Borders too.

Again, I understand how they're supposed to work, the exact in-game application in a few situations I've mentioned is what I was getting at. And of course I've read up on them, I wouldn't enable a feature I didn't want to see working in a game and to do so without understanding a feature (to the extent possible) would be foolish in the extreme.

26. There was an Option in BUG to turn off the "actuals". Maybe that would be better for you?

Joseph, making a post that some aspect/feature of the mod feels off to me doesn't automatically mean I want to turn the feature off, as it's likely the feature is not a "problem" - I'm just trying to understand how it is coming up with those numbers as it isn't clear to me. Some clarity from forum discussion and explanation for how this aspect of the mod comes up with these numbers that on their face don't seem to add up is what I'm after.

I *don't* want to turn it off, I want to understand how it works.

27. Stop using REV and it's associated Options, they seem to really bother you. I generally (almost never) do not use REV but for the occasional test game.

*sigh* See above, I don't want to turn a features off, I want them to work BETTER.

I want these features I post about to work better than they currently do, better being defined as current aspects of the mod having balancing issues that could be addressed potentially in future revisions. I thought that was the whole point of this thread and indeed this very forum, to discuss the mod and try and make things better in future versions?

My posts serve as the method of analysis - I'm trying to get across how I think things should work or perhaps could work if others agree some of the numbers and balancing mechanics and methods should be tweaked or changed in some way. If people don't agree fine, but at least there is discussion and possible alternatives that could be used to work around some of the more pressing issues. No demands, no ultimatums just open discussion on possible problems and possible solutions.

Just saying "turn that off" or "don't use this feature" is not very helpful to the discussion.

@urtho,
Did you ever state what Difficulty level you play on? From your remarks I would guess Deity, but then some of the things you state, like workers near a border, are what a novice would post.

I knew someone would pick up on that point in the post and make something of it. Yes that is a novice mistake usually but when you've "won" the game and are just playing out the string as it were in the mod to see some of the new wonder movies/techs and how they interact (an extended test game if you will) you sometimes just automate the more tedious and unimportant worker tasks. The loss of the workers themselves is nothing at that point in the game given all the production bonuses at that stage in the game, production overflow, and multi-production from this mod. It's the fact that the worker thing still happens after all these years of base game development and mod making that would be funny if it wasn't so mind-numbingly stupid. Ah well, guess no one else cares about the issue.

For the record I usually play Monarch in vanilla BtS with some Emperor. For this mod it's been about 70/30 Emperor and Immortal. I haven't tried Diety with this mod active yet to be honest, may give it whirl at some point just to see how painful it can be. I'm no master player to be sure but I do alright I'd say.

but far less than play style preferences put to post as demands for change to suit your style of play.

Well I obviously don't agree but drama-free is the word of this post so I'll just say you're reading the posts wrong and leave it at that.

If I make an attempt to weed out the negative tone of your text (which is quite hard), I can accept that there are certain points that you make which are legitimate and that could benefit the mod. So in the future, if you want to get more cooperative feedback, try to tone down the attitude.

Wow seriously? It was an offhanded remark on how much I dislike a feature of the mod that caused me to consider not using it anymore, one I'll mention you yourself have claimed to hate with a passion ("Could not agree more in this point"). And you react this way? Yeesh these forums can be really off at times. That post WAS free of attitude as I specifically wrote in a genial and non-confrontational fashion, if you're reacting this way you'd probably have had a stroke if you'd have seen the original version given the tone with how I started to write that post before I cut out any drama and sarcasm and other things.

I don't like this aspect of the mod and gave some thought to not using the mod anymore because of it and made a single one line comment to that effect voicing my passing thought, end of story. It was not a personal attack on any forum posters or mod makers or the quality of their work or demands that it be fixed or anything else of that nature and if you or anyone else for that matter is reading it as such you're way off base.

Maybe you have 'no city culture flipping' option on when u set up the game.

Nope. Always make sure I have it unselected.

Your not choosing play now option I hope, always select 'custom game'.

Heh, no. I'm not sure I ever used the play now option even on the very first day I installed Civ4 way back when all those many years ago. I like control about how my games are set up, the more options the better. :)

Having Revolutions on speeds up the process of flipping a city but even without REV on you can flip cities, i've done it lots of times. The thing about the surrounding tiles of a city being invulnerable to culture conversion is because they inherently belong to that city.

But why, why do they inherently belong to the city? They don't in vanilla Civ4, just in this mod. In the base game if you can't culturally defend the tiles you want your cities to work, too bad. That's how cultural fights work in the base game. It's this mod that has deemed the surrounding 8 city tiles are owned by that city for ever and ever just because that's the way it is and it will never change no matter how much you culturally dominate the tiles.

This is what I have a problem with, many others apparently don't agree. I hope it will change at some point, if it can't be or won't be changed, I suppose I'll just have to live with it.

However, you can flip the city through culture just the same way you do in civ4bts. Then you will have the city and those tiles ;)

I'll keep trying then, but I honestly have never seen it happen even once since I've been using this mod. I really don't know what I'm doing wrong here as I can't get it to work with the mod even with a strong cultural attack and the mod options enabled that people have mentioned.

Turn off Barb Civs option when u setup game. Alternatively there is a setting in the BUG menu to do with barb civs. You can edit how many techs they get when they spawn, how many units etc, also how big the city needs to be before they become a 'civ'.

I did set those options at some point but then I updated to a newer SVN and they didn't stick and I didn't remember to reset them and... yeah. User error I suppose but in my defense there are a lot of options to tweak and set and reset after updating. Guess the answer is to update less frequently or not at all while you've got an ongoing game, at least for me anyways.

-- Overall im not sure what difficulty you are playing on but I think monarch is a good starting point, i've played this mod quite a lot as well as c2c and the AI isn't as dumb as they appear. I usually play on immortal which is fun. My advice is to just boost the difficulty up a couple of notches.

I don't think the AI is dumb, it can actually be somewhat clever at times - I've seen it pull some interesting moves with diplomacy and vassels and unexpected invasions and so on so I know it can present some issues for the human player at times. I'm just not sure it understands the finer aspects of this mod (or even the broad strokes) well enough to exploit them as a human can. An obvious uphill battle to make the AI understand but a worthy goal that I wish 45 luck with making happen from his rebalancing efforts.

About the :yuck: I too thought there was too much unhealthiness but after awhile you realise its really not hard to have +40 :food: in a city at which point -8 :yuck: isn't going to kill you.

Yes it does get better in the late-Industrial / Modern eras but it does seem a bit much in the earlier ones. Perhaps I've just spent too much time in those eras due to restart-itis that I'm getting a skewed view. I'm willing to admit I'm wrong if the consensus is that the current settings are fine, just wanted to bring up my feelings at the time.

Thanks for the responses everyone, they've been interesting and worth thinking about. Cheers.
 
The explaining of the Actuals versus the vanilla way of displaying what a bldg gives is complicated to say the least. I do Not understand it. I just accept it and play on. Ppl that are smarter and Much better Modders says it works, who Am I to disagree. Sorry I can't explain it's inner workings.

The Fishing Boat Fix from Vokayra has been added in the newest SVN.

You can still play older games with the newer SVNs. Max Compatible Saves insured that. Made by Koshling and a ture work of genius.

@urtho,
We actually agree on several points. :) But I just can't explain in detail Why an Option works the way it does in all circumstances. I just don't have the Modding skill sets to say Oh it's the <iCivicAngerPercent> that's causing the extra :mad: faces for using Despotism (as an XML example, but could not tell you it's a Python script change in Python Raze City Events that causes X after you capture Y). Way beyond me there.

JosEPh
 
If you want to change the civics, look at Realism Invictius. They have a substancial number of varied civics, maybe you could pick and choose there for ideas.

Or better yet, bring them into the modding of this!!!!:)

P.S. you didn't edit the version number, of I've installed it wrong
 
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